NHS England has extended its contract with Hitachi Digital Services for software support and development of the National Breast Screening System (NBSS).
It has added two years to an agreement that has been in place since 2015 and was due to expire at the end of May, adding £36 million to its value.
NBSS is the core IT platform for day-to-day operations of routine breast screening by over 70 offices in England, Wales and the Isle of Man, managing bookings and onward referrals.
The contract notice says it is approaching 20 years-old and is based on Microsoft’s Visual Basic 6 programming language. This was released in 1998 and Microsoft withdrew support in 2008, although it has maintained its compatibility with applications on which it is based.
The notice says that the volume of development has made NHSS extremely complex and that rolling out new releases is very time consuming, but at the moment there are “no reasonable alternatives”.
The new extension “will provide service continuity while the future long term strategy for NBSS continues to be developed and subsequently implemented”.
NHS England has recently launched a pilot project using the NHS App to invite women to breast screening appointments.
